How Long Can We Afford Runaway Healthcare Spending?

from the American Spectator:

Healthcare Spending to Reach $5.7 Trillion by 2026

Profligacy never had it so good. But for how long?

“National healthcare spending trends are unsustainable in the long term,” President Donald Trump’s budget acknowledges.

An article published earlier this month in the medical policy journal Health Affairs buttresses this simple point. Medical inflation stands to outpace both economic growth and actual inflation. Our spending — government, individual, business, etc. — on healthcare, projected to increase 5.5 percent annually over the next nine years, pushes the total to $5.7 trillion a year by 2026.

That accounts for 19.7 percent of the projected gross domestic product. Put another way, American healthcare spending in 2026 equals the entire size of the 1990 U.S. economy and eclipses the current gross domestic product of every other country not named China. It’s not that we spend more on healthcare than every other country — we spend more on healthcare than every other country, save China, spends on everything.

While growth in spending on private plans slows over the next decade, government programs that promise more coverage, cover more people, and cater to an aging clientele in an aging country fuel the boom in healthcare spending.

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About the Common Constitutionalist

Brent, aka The Common Constitutionalist, is a Constitutional Conservative, and advocates for first principles, founders original intent and enemy of progressives. He is former Navy, Martial Arts expert. As well as publisher of the Common Constitutionalist blog, he also is a contributing writer for Political Outcast, Godfather Politics, Minute Men News (Liberty Alliance), Freedom Outpost, the Daily Caller, Vision To America and Free Republic. He also writes an exclusive weekly column for World Net Daily (WND).